I did a send/receive on Sunday (yesterday) and it auto-downloaded MLS 3.2.3 (ahead of the transition to CUBS in two weeks) and told me to reboot. After the reboot, I got a blue screen of death. I rebooted again and this time avoided the BSOD but MLS would not start (double-clicking on the icon had no effect -- no splash screen, no java process got kicked off in Task Viewer, nothing...).

So I downloaded the full MLS 3.2.3 installer from mls.lds.org (101MB) and figured I could install it on top of what was already there. That didn't work -- the installer said that the version already installed was newer than what was trying to be installed.

I tried many of the suggestions there -- deleting Afaria, UDX, and Java directories but nothing helped.

So now the clerk computer has no working version of MLS installed on it. If I could get the existing MLS to uninstall, I expect I could reinstall MLS from the full download. Any ideas?

I'm on vacation with my family this week (we leave this morning and return Thursday night). I was going to go to the church on Friday night to submit the quarterly report but now it's looking like that isn't going to happen.

I wonder if it's possible to just reload this computer with a clean installation of Windows XP. Does the stake keep the software I would need to make this happen? If I had a clean install, I could install MLS and presumably things would be happy again...

Who can help me with these problems? Stake Clerk? STS?

We had several tithing donations to process after church and were unable to do it in MLS. I just made a spreadsheet to record the donation information and we included that (along with a note explaining the situation) with the usual stuff that gets mailed to SLC. Not sure how this is going to get resolved. Mail from Germany to SLC usually takes about a week so if might be able to get these entered into the MLS before the letter is received in Utah. Also, the RS President needs to get reimbursed for food purchased from Fast Offering funds but I can't get in to MLS to process the check...

psnarula wrote:I wonder if it's possible to just reload this computer with a clean installation of Windows XP. Does the stake keep the software I would need to make this happen? If I had a clean install, I could install MLS and presumably things would be happy again...

If the computer was originally set up using the Desktop 5.5 image, then a much simpler option would be to restore the saved system image, as described in this post.

Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.

I had a second ward computer do virtually the same thing yesterday. The patch downloaded, installed and prompted for a reboot. The unit finished their finances for the day but forgot to restart. When I went to shut down, there was a windows update so I figured I might as well get that, too. I selected "Install updates and shutdown".

Yeah, you'd think I'd have remembered. No BSOD this time, but MLS would not start up after the reboot. I'd get the splash screen and then nothing. Downloading the MLS 3.2.3 installer and installing over the existing install fixed the install.

I had 2 computers in the stake with similar issue. The patch downloaded, installed. MLS would not start up after the reboot. Would flash the splash screen and then disappear and no MLS. Downloaded the MLS 3.2.3 and installed over the existing install fixed the problem.

Here's a thought. If you do not have Desktop 5.5 installed, try a system restore to a date prior to downloading the patch. That should return MLS to its pre-update mode, undoing whatever the current glitch is. If the restore works, then I guess your 2 options are to uninstall the previous version first or just install 3.2.3 over 3.2.2. I guess I'd be worried about running into the same bug when trying to uninstall, so I'd probably go with running the installer over the previous version.

I believe Desktop 5.5 has disabled the system restore feature, so this won't work if you have it. I'd recommend this before you try a complete system reinstall. Less time consuming. And if it doesn't work, you still have that as an option.

psnarula wrote:the installer said that the version already installed was newer than what was trying to be installed.

This is the line that bothers me the most. You do not get this error if you run the installer of the same MLS version currently installed on your computer. Somehow you computer has gotten confused into thinking it is a later version of MLS than it is. As for how that happened, I have no idea.

Just got back last night from vacation with the family at Disneyland Paris. This issue still needs to be resolved. I'm thinking that somewhere there is a registry key that makes the installer think that a newer version is installed. Maybe I'll use Process Monitor to see which registry keys the installer is accessing. I might be able to fix this problem by just deleting a few rogue registry keys...

Not sure what the situation is with the STS. Maybe I'll call him tomorrow if I can't fix this myself tonight.